Old New Year

Everyone knows why this holiday has an independent status. First, this is due to the change of calendar. The old style, the Julian calendar, was introduced by the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. Pope Gregory XIII undertook a reform of the Julian calendar - so the concepts of "new style", "Gregorian calendar" appeared. Old New Year is the Julian New Year. Secondly, the Russian Orthodox Church observes all traditions in the Julian calendar system, and the New Year, according to the “new style”, falls on the Orthodox forty-day fast in honor of Christmas. Third, in Russia, after the revolution and the establishment of a new calendar, people persistently continued to celebrate the New Year in the old style, guided not by political convictions, but by traditions.

 

Today, the Old New Year is traditionally celebrated in countries: Moldova, Armenia. Belarusian. LatviaKazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, in some cantons of Switzerland, Ukraine.

The Old New Year traditions should be mentioned separately. Few people associate it with winter salad, “Soviet” champagne, tangerines. The holiday is quite different, more mystical and mysterious, having its own customs. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it has a longer history of existence and absorbed rather pagan beliefs and omens. This day, dedicated to St. Basil the Great, was considered very important in terms of its impact on the following year. And what was important for the peasants - land and livestock, which determined the nature of the rites. But many of them can still be tried today.

 

So, for example, the hostess prepared dumplings with surprises. As a filling used flour (to flour), beans (to children), button (to new clothes), sugar, salt, pepper, thread (to the road), money.

 

The second rite - "walking home" is very similar to our carols: children were treated to pies, boiled pork legs, pork products. Children, in turn, desired health, wealth, well-being, sang songs and danced. Nowadays, the situation is complicated when the Old New Year falls on a working week. But children still support this ceremony, so do not forget to stock up on candy and small things to please the caroling child. In the Old New Year, meat dishes, such as pork, or sausage, should appear on your table, since St. Basil was famous in Russia as a pig coop, that is, the patron of pork food. Previously, a pig carcass was put on the table, and the owner of the family treated all members of the family.

 

You can please your guests with figurines of pets from the dough, so that next year everyone will have prosperity in the house.

It is difficult to ignore and another rite that is interesting to perform on the night of 13 to 14 January – the rite of cooking porridge. In ancient times, this ceremony, with a conspiracy, was conducted by an older woman who brought cereals from the barn and cooked porridge on river or well water. Porridge was put in the oven, by the way it was cooked, it was possible to predict the future: if porridge crawled out of the pot - this foreshadowed trouble, trouble should be expected from a cracked pot. Only porridge promised happiness and harvest. Good porridge was eaten for breakfast, bad porridge was thrown into the river.

 

And no one now, of course, can refuse the opportunity to see their fate – to guess. But the most important thing is that the ancestors very much honored Vasiliev day and believed that fortune telling on this night - the most truthful. Do not be upset if you did not have time to guess on the festive night, the Christmas Eve continues, and you have the opportunity to see your betrothed, find out his name, decide when marriage is coming. It is no coincidence that most fortune-telling is aimed at learning something about the betrothed - guessed mostly unmarried girls. Modern divination has been greatly simplified and modernized: papers with names under the pillow; a ring in a glass of water, the number of strokes of which indicates the age at which the girl will marry; melted paraffin, in the figures of which the girl should see her future. And earlier, these rituals, in addition to fun and entertainment, brought a significant amount of fear, because guessing in the bath and cellar, which were considered border zones between the two worlds. Now everything is simpler, but many still tend to risk terrible fortune-telling with mirrors, a saucer and a needle.

 

We can enjoy the unique opportunity to celebrate our favorite holiday twice, given the fact that these are two very different holidays. The New Year is an echo of the Soviet era with traditional Christmas trees, tangerines, champagne, more secular and dynamic, reflecting the modern countdown with his presidential appeals, New Year's television programs. Old New Year is filled with pagan beliefs and rituals, more mystical and mysterious, giving people a glimpse into the future. These are two different historical boundaries, two cultural traditions, united in holidays with almost the same names.